


Perks

by strawberrylippy



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, q hates (read: loves) giving james his t shot, tired old man james, trans!James
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:40:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27769204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strawberrylippy/pseuds/strawberrylippy
Summary: It's been a long day for the double-oh, and when combined with copious aches and pains and an annoyingly persistent headache, there's only one person he can go to to get his shot done at such an ungodly hour.
Relationships: James Bond & Q
Kudos: 13





	Perks

**Author's Note:**

> Yes this *is* completely and utterly self-indulgent, you are correct. Figured I'd flip the trope on its head and makes James trans instead of Q, because we really deserve some 'not a skinny twink' trans men. Contains mentions of needles and injections, but it's more about the journey rather than the actual act of administering the T shot. Any and all mistakes are my own and the product of exactly 0 proofreading.

There were very few perks that came with his line of work; the hours were long, the work physically demanding, the psychological toll practically unthinkable to anyone who wasn’t steeped in the culture of espionage, and one always risked being unceremoniously killed at any given moment. Duty over self. _Crown_ over self. For all that it had undoubtedly destroyed who he was as a person, James wouldn’t have changed it for the world. Not anymore, at least.

He’d become as much of a fixture as M had been in her day, stalking about the place like he knew every nook and cranny like the back of his hand, regardless of which building the intelligence service found itself in. The agents, the too-shiny floors, the revolving door of section heads; they’d all become something of a second home to the double-oh. A _first_ home, perhaps, given that the last place he’d felt even remotely comfortable had been – as far as his long, _long_ memory could remember – as a child in Scotland. Skyfall, before all the death and horrible memories tainted it. He’d grown into his own man at MI6, after all. A guiding hand was offered by the late M, but almost all the work rested squarely on James’ shoulders. She wasn’t going to go easy on him, and if she had, the reckless young agent likely wouldn’t have been best pleased.

As things changed around MI6, however, they also stayed much the same. A new Quartermaster with new toys and a marginally more personable nature offset the familiar doldrums of dealing with a new M. Work was still work, though. His routine remained much the same despite the calamitous events that had shook the country; he still got hammered the night before he returned from a mission, still found himself injured and bleeding on Q’s sofa more often than not before he dared to check-in with M the next day. The only thing that seemed to be different were his aches and pains. His knee was far from the only thing that was going: years and years of high-intensity wear and tear, substance abuse, gunshot wounds, a myriad of mental illness. There was no sleep for the wicked, but when Bond all but collapsed onto Q’s desk chair at what could’ve only been described as a frankly appalling hour of the morning, the bone-deep exhaustion and the splitting headache were doing their damnedest to ensure that the double-oh at least had a rest.

A yawn pulled at tired old features as a hiss of air escaped the room. For a few brief seconds, sounds from outside Q-Branch filtered in, the foremost among them the voice of MI6’s erstwhile Quartermaster himself.

James didn’t stir when Q’s inquisitive gaze settled on him, nor did he make a pathetic effort to garner the man’s attention when those bespectacled eyes went back to scanning over whatever the Hell was on the tablet in Q’s hands. “You look like death, 007.”

_Candid as ever, Q_ , James thought fondly to himself. “Thank you, Q. Very kind of you to say.”

The rustle of clothing against leather signalled the agent’s attempt to sit just a little bit more upright, presentable; he mightn’t have been _pathetically_ fishing for the younger man’s attention, but he’d be damned if he wasn’t going to command it anyway.

For his part, Q certainly noticed Bond’s efforts. It was nice to have that little bit of power over a man like James; equal parts respect and wanting. A few swipes of his finger and Q _finally_ deigned to grace the agent with his attention, briefly diverting mere moments later so he could down the dregs of his tea. Cold. Milky. There was probably a fly in there too, he thought.

“So, did you come for a bedtime story, or-?”

Laughter chuffed from James’ lips, ever so slightly laboured and punctuated with a subtle wince. “No, Q. It’s Monday.”

Monday? What was Monday supposed to mean? It took the Quartermaster a few moments to parse it, to compartmentalize the last vestiges of the blueprints he’d been studying mere moments earlier in favour of genuinely paying attention to the very exhausted man commandeering his chair.

“Oh!” one look into those harsh blue eyes and it had clicked. “Aren’t you supposed to take it earlier in the day and not – oh, let me see-“ a flick of his wrist, watch face reflecting off his glasses, “-at a quarter to midnight?” In complete fairness to James, Q thought it was a miracle that he even remembered at _all_.

A rolling of his eyes, which proved to be more for show than any sort of genuine annoyance, drew a grin onto James’ face, however slight. Q cared. Q _cared_. It was oddly intimate, domestic, even. He could’ve just as easily gone to medical, but instead he’d dragged himself down to Q. Q, who didn’t even remotely hesitate to round his desk and open a drawer, procuring needles and a vial.

The effort of disrobing entirely proved to be too much of an effort, requiring far more movement than James was prepared to make in the moment; just about pulling down his trousers would have to do for now. “Oh, we’re going for the thigh today, are we?”

“Road rash on my arse. Hardly a pleasant injection sight.”

It was Q’s turn to huff out a laugh, then, no sympathy at all in his eyes as he handed James an alcohol wipe. “Ah yes, the ‘getting dragged behind a car’ incident. Forgot about that.” No he hadn’t. “Are you at least going to give me room, or am I going to have to sit on your knee to do this?” Despite the look he knew he was going to get, Q asked anyway. They had something of a routine now, when it came to James’ injections, despite how few and far between these incidents were.

“Knowing you, you’d sit on the sore one, so-“ he spread his legs as much as his trousers allowed, giving Q enough space to position himself between them on his haunches. “Can you _please_ inject with the proper needle this time? I know _you_ don’t know what it feels like to be injected with a 16 gauge needle when you’re supposed to be using a 22, but I can assure you that it’s not pleasant. I’d rather _not_ bleed all over my trousers, thank you.”

They were bold words coming from a man who was trusting someone else with a sharp object, but Q simply made a threatening face as he drew the clear liquid from the vial. “You get _tortured_ but an injection with a too-big needle is too much for you? I’m speechless, Bond, I really am,” that wasn’t going to stop him from talking, however. It was easier, Q found, to administer the shot when James was distracted, when he wasn’t liable to clench his muscles at just the _wrong_ moment. Simple bedside manner, really, in Q’s mind.

“It’s hardly my fault that it wasn’t a fear until a certain acne-riddled Quartermaster fucked it up one evening.”

“Well, actually, it is. You _could_ do these yourself you know. You’ve dug bullets out of yourself, Bond, what’s a testosterone injection compared to that?”

_Intimacy_ was the word that James had to bite back. It was all about someone else being part of the process, of someone he trusted being the one to break skin. “Why would I do that when I have a perfectly willing Quartermaster to do it for me? You get to see me in my nickers, Q, surely that’s incentive enough-“

A harsh sigh and a rather painful little prick cut the agent off, Q smiling as sweetly as possible as he casually injected the liquid into Bond’s thigh. Bedside manner be damned, really.

“Getting to stab you is incentive enough, Bond. It never quite gets old; though it _is_ nice to be injecting you with something other than nano blood for once, if only because I don’t then have to lie to M about it.”

Sharp blue eyes followed Q’s movements as he raised once more to his feet, a cap placed on the needle before Q brought it over to the nearest sharps container. “You act like you don’t get a rush from it, Q. You’re not _that_ innocent.”

By the time Q had turned on his heel and returned to his desk, he’d convincingly masked the smile that he’d been sporting at the mere _idea_ that he had ever been ‘innocent.’ “Some of us don’t have to lie for a living, James. It’s rather more difficult when I have a slightly healthier respect of authority than you do.”

A quirked brow was all Bond could manage before laughter spilled from his lips, the sight more than comical when combined with the fact that his trousers were still wrapped around his knees. “That’s not fair now, Q! I don’t flash M my nickers every other month, only you.”

“That’s only because M would be the one towing you behind _his_ car if you stripped down to your skivvies in front of him. God help me the day Tanner or R show up one day to the sight of me crouched down between your thighs-“


End file.
